Ariel’s Broken Jukebox Pt.3 - Gaslighting and the Fingerless Prince

What is it like to lose a voice?

A lot of people wondered when they heard I had been gaslit for three years.

Well, it's both simple and complex, like an equation not everyone can solve. It was like death, yet it felt alive. Gaslit people go to work, have fun, work out, meet family and friends.

But to do so, they must do without a voice box. They might use an AI program to speak for them. Or they could use their abusers, who know how to talk to them well. In that case they speak but not their minds, they laugh but not at the jokes ty find funny, they attend parties and gatherings, they buy clothes, cut their hair, shave their legs, but they are still not them, even eating their favorite ice-cream bowl or lying lazily by the sea.

Sounds complex? Well...let me tell you a story about a prince who was everything everybody wanted him to be, but not himself when he agreed to lose his voice.

Part II

"The prince mounted his horse and ran. He roamed the kingdom. But the prince was spoiled, not meant for harsh living, so he was fooled and tricked by many. He gave his heart to men and women who wanted his beauty, royal blood, or art. His dimes barely covered his daily meals because he played the piano in taverns and carnivals. The prince, unlike his brothers, was sheltered. Because he ventured into the world without prior experience, the world treated him harshly. His fragile soul couldn't take it. He fell ill, and nobody cared for him. In the middle of feverish dreams, and imaginary nocturnes, the prince saw the evil sorcerer for who he truly was, a bear trap, a chain clamped around the prince's throat, a metal grinder cutting off his fingertips. The prince screamed but what came out of his mouth were long tendrils of fungus and moss.

The prince's body healed itself, but instead of using the illness as an opportunity to grow and strengthen himself, the prince closed in on himself further. As a result, living among people was hard because a shell surrounded his sharp edges and constricted his movements and thoughts. He rode his horse, slumped over him, and let him drag him, half conscious, half lethargic to the piano hiding place. It was there, clean and polished. The prince sat with difficulty and played his last symphony; a thousand cries of birds shot at in the Hebrides. He raised teary eyes to Heaven, waiting for some higher power to intervene, and make him strong again. But the sorcerer intervened. He was the figure appearing from the gloomy depths of the forest.

The prince stood up, walked to him, bent down and allowed the evil sorcerer to hold him tight until he was breathless. He raised a shaky hand and signed the contract. The sorcerer grazed his thumb with the tip of his heart-plucker ring. He used the blood of the prince to seal the contract. The prince's blood turned into wax when it reached paper. The paper wrapped around itself and vanished inside the sorcerer's tunic. The sorcerer then held the cloak and cocooned the prince inside it. At first the prince was terrified, all those layers and layers of black, how could he breathe, speak, or eat? But the cloak fit perfectly, it was as if it draped itself around his body, skin over skin, the velvet was soft and nurturing, like a mother's embrace, the cloth face shield wrapped itself around his cheeks, he was muzzled but still could speak, his voice came out strange, deep and mumbling. The prince thought it gave him an air of mystery, and when the sewn fingers tightened and his fingers lost all their mobility, the prince took one last farewell look at the piano, turned his back on it, and walked with the sorcerer back to the kingdom.

The prince was surprised to find a welcoming reception. Everybody was happy to see him cloaked like a phantom figure. He wondered if they could see below the face shield, the hood that threw shades on his face, and the restricted movement of his fingers, but the sorcerer whispered into his ears that it all made him powerful, feared and mysterious. None of them had loved the prince translucent as a clear pond, nobody wanted to see his pores or count his freckles. He could hide inside the fabric and give off an air of mystery and fear. He could invoke different feelings in the hearts of friends and foes alike. Most importantly, he won't have to play the piano. I wouldn't be able to if I tried, the prince thought sarcastically. But the sorcerer's voice rose deep from within him, warning him against sarcasm, against disobeying his face, disgracing the cloak he is wearing. This time, the shame will usurp him, there will be nothing left. Had he forgotten his prior rebellions? Had he not stormed wildly into the unknown, he would have saved himself countless nights of shame and pain. Had he forgotten the terror of throwing his heart at the mercy of strangers? Or spending the nights sick and lonely in a place with unkind people all around, with nothing to protect him or care for him but himself? And he could never protect himself, he was weak, pathetic and meek. He was not ready for this world yet.

The prince suppressed his wandering thoughts, in fear of angering the sorcerer, after all he was the only one who showed genuine care and kindness towards him. He leaned into the cloak, and the amazing thing was, that the cloak leaned into him as well. It felt like they were intertwined as one, both skins weaved into a single mass of existence. As he eased into wearing the cloak every single day, he found that he couldn't live without it, even if it made his vision narrower, his tongue heavier with the burden of speaking from behind the cloth face shield. He found his rigid fingers surprisingly capable of straightening him up as he walked into a courtroom, or a council meeting. He tapped with ease on the round table and proved a point simply by standing and saying nothing, only watching the meetings with solemn eyes that he found made a lot of people uneasy. If something was too complex for him to discuss, the sorcerer would magically manifest and intervene, and he could eloquently describe everything that the prince wanted to say, but in a manner that didn't make it sound bizarre or antagonistic.

The prince and the cloak became one, and the prince found himself drawing further and further inside himself. The prince became two princes, one who was out there attending board meetings, participating in official ceremonies, and reinforcing presence in managing estates across the kingdoms. And the prince in the shadow of a man, whose fingers curl inward from dreams of electric sheep and Mesopotamia-candies. That naked prince, as he stood cloaked and safe facing a raging bull of a stormy sea, was as far away as the sound of the piano in his thorax. Good, he said as he rubbed the sole of his shoes at a rock, let's keep it that way."